A variety of medical devices are used for chronic, e.g., long-term, delivery of therapy to patients suffering from a variety of conditions, such as chronic pain, tremor, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, urinary or fecal incontinence, sexual dysfunction, obesity, or gastroparesis. As examples, electrical stimulation generators are used for chronic delivery of electrical stimulation therapies such as cardiac pacing, electrical stimulation, muscle stimulation, or the like. Pumps or other fluid delivery devices may be used for chronic delivery of therapeutic agents, such as drugs. Typically, such devices provide therapy continuously or periodically according to parameters contained within a program. A program may comprise respective values for each of a plurality of parameters, specified by a clinician.
Typically, a clinician uses a programmer, e.g., a computing device capable of communicating with implantable medical devices (IMDs) via device telemetry, to program an IMD for delivery of electrical stimulation therapy to a patient. In some cases, such clinician programmers may take the form of handheld and/or tablet-type computing devices.
A clinician may select values for a number of programmable therapy parameters in order to define the electrical stimulation therapy to be delivered to a patient. For example, the clinician may select a pulse voltage or pulse current amplitude and pulse width for a stimulation waveform to be delivered to the patient, as well as a rate at which the pulses are to be delivered to the patient. The clinician may also select as therapy parameters particular electrodes within an electrode set to be used to deliver the pulses, and the polarities of the selected electrodes. A group of parameter values may be referred to as a program in the sense that they drive the electrical stimulation therapy to be delivered to the patient.
In some cases, the patient may be allowed to activate and/or modify the therapy delivered by the medical device. For example, a patient may be provided with a patient programmer. The patient programmer communicates with a medical device to allow the patient to activate therapy and/or adjust therapy parameters. For example, an IMD, such as an implantable neurostimulator, may be accompanied by an external patient programmer that permits the patient to activate and deactivate electrical stimulation therapy and/or adjust the intensity of the delivered electrical stimulation.